This is just a simple little happy post ๐ I know the situation isn't super special or unusual.
I just ran an Endeavour OS + AUR update (eos-update --aur) and it had a net size of -7.38 MB. i.e., out of 138 packages, enough of them reduced their footprint to make the net change negative.
So I got a bit of SSD space back! It's not the first time either. I don't think I saw that once in 25ish years of running Windows or macOS. Maybe a video driver package would shrink on occasion, but never a major system update.
So yeah, just a lil' shoutout to all the maintainers out there optimizing your apps and services. You're great ๐